Thursday, December 24, 2009

(this post is part of a series analyzing every show at the Fillmore East)

June 14-15, 1968 Grateful Dead/Jeff Beck Group/Seventh Sons

Although this was The Grateful Dead’s first weekend at The Fillmore East, they had already played New York numerous times, including twice at this venue when it was still called The Village Theater (December 26-27, 1967). On the previous trip, the theater was in such poor repair that snow actually came through the roof onto the stage, and the show was not a pleasant experience for anyone involved. A return to Bill Graham's newly refurbished rock palace promised better things for the Dead. Nonetheless, legend has it that for the early show the first night, the then largely unknown Jeff Beck Group blew them away.

Generally, each Fillmore East bill played 4 times, with early and late shows on both Friday and Saturday nights. The first Friday night show was generally the show attended by journalists, industry people and scene makers, so the effect of a good early show on Friday could have powerful implications, even if the late show presented an entirely different picture. The story about the Jeff Beck Group "blowing away" the Grateful Dead at their mutual Fillmore East debuts has been repeated so many times that I don't know the original source of it (I myself read it first in review of a Rod Stewart album in Rolling Stone in the early 1970s).

In June of 1968, The Jeff Beck Group had been touring England for 16 months, but although they had released a few singles their first album (Truth) would not come out for two more months. Beck was playing the Fillmore on the basis of his Yardbirds status and English live reputation. Already English managers were seeing how establishing a live reputation in America could set the table for a successful album. The original Jeff Beck Group pretty much laid out the blueprint for heavy English rock, with a bluesy power trio that included a dynamic lead singer and a sensational guitarist over a lively rhythm section. Beck had played America before with the Yardbirds, but for the rest of his band it was not only their American debut but the Fillmore East was the largest room they had ever played in.

The story goes that for a Friday early show heavily populated with industry types, journalists and scenemakers, after an unmemorable opening set by The Seventh Sons (see below), the Jeff Beck Group came out and played searing, powerful blues. Oddly, however, only Beck, bassist Ron Wood and drummer Mickey Waller were visible, while a rich, gravelly voice seemed to emanate from nowhere. Supposedly, it was only after a few numbers and thunderous ovations that a shy, frizzy haired Rod Stewart would step out in front of the amplifiers, relieved that he was going to be a success in big, bad America. The Jeff Beck Group thundered through the rest of their set, and when the Grateful Dead came on, the industry crowd found them to be a big letdown.

How much truth might their be to this delicious story? In the first place, although there has been very little officially released evidence, the original 1968 Jeff Beck Group sound pretty awesome to me even now, and through the exceptional Fillmore East sound system it must have been something indeed. These days, we tend to think of Beck's various jazzy excursions, and Stewart's rather schmaltzy dabbling in popular songs, but we forget that Beck wrote the book on the English Telecaster blues, and Stewart can sing the hell out of anything. While the Yardbirds had many partisan fans inclined to like Beck, they can hardly have had an idea of how exceptional the new group was, because the album had not yet been released.

It is also hard to remember that the heavy-singer-plus-trio was not yet a rock convention. Trios improvised like Cream or Hendrix, and some bands like The Who featured lead singers and three musicians, but no one was doing both at this high of a level. Led Zeppelin would perfect this model, becoming the heaviest of the heavy, mixing memorable songs with wild jamming, but this was six months prior to Zeppelin's descent on American shores, as Jimmy Page had just broken up the Yardbirds a few weeks earlier. Thus New York's rock cognoscenti heard not just a great band, but a whole new style of music and a future popular superstar all in one unexpected blast. Given that in the 1968 configuration the Grateful Dead only played one set each show at the Fillmore East, I don't doubt that as they would have just been shaking the cobwebs off, the Dead were somewhat of an anticlimax after the Jeff Beck Group thunderbolt.

The part of this story I have never quite believed is the business of shy little Rod Stewart hiding behind the amplifiers for the first three numbers, because he had stage fright. Stewart had been a professional singer for at least three years by this time, and even if the Fillmore East was the biggest room he had ever played in, it wasn't Buckingham Palace. Since I don't know the source of this oft-repeated story, I can't say what prompted it, but I have to think it was more along the lines that whoever initially wrote about it had their sightline blocked until Stewart moved around some on stage. I just don't see Rod Stewart as the nervous little wallflower, but its such a good story that even he doesn't want to deny it.

In June 1968, the Grateful Dead were at a peculiar crossroads. They had been underground legends for two years, but they had only released one poorly-received album (their debut on Warner Bros, released in March 1967). Over a year between albums was simply unheard of in the 1960s; in 1967, for example The Beatles released two albums. The band had been struggling with the ground-breaking mixture of live and studio recordings that would make up their next album, Anthem Of The Sun, released in July 1968, but no one knew that at the time.

For all the revisionist history that makes the Dead and Bill Graham seem like allies from the beginning, in fact the band and Graham had a complex, contested relationship. The Dead had spent most of 1968 operating the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco as a direct competitor to Graham's Fillmore operation. Around the month of June, Graham had flown to Ireland to negotiate directly with the owner of the Carousel, and he managed to effectively steal the lease out from under The Dead. Graham was taking over the financially ailing Carousel to rename it the Fillmore West, undoing the Dead's plans for financial independence, and yet here was Graham booking the Dead in New York City. Fortunately, however much certain financial matters intervened, the Dead and Graham had always gotten along personally, so the finances didn't interfere with a high profile booking at Fillmore East.

Ironically, I believe the winners in this little story are those who attended Friday's late show. Since it was not the "industry" show, there are no eyewitness accounts that I am aware of. There is, however, a well recorded audience tape of the Grateful Dead's late show performance, and it is absolutely scorching. People forget that the affable and generous Jerry Garcia was a ferociously competitive and ambitious man with a guitar in his hands. Garcia has always acknowledged being a Beck fan, and he can not have missed the Jeff Beck Group's sensational performance. After a flat opening set by the Dead, and after what was no doubt another monster set by Beck in the late show, Garcia was not going to let it go unchallenged. After some roaring feedback, the Dead opened with a high-energy version of their most difficult song, "The Eleven" followed by a wild psychedelic medley ("St. Stephen">"Alligator">"Turn On Your Lovelight">"Caution"), and the train never stops rolling. Now that must have been some show: Jeff Beck revising heavy rock music, and The Dead showing Manhattan they hadn't been resting on their laurels the previous year.

There are almost no accounts of either Beck's or The Dead's performances on Saturday night. The one interesting tidbit comes from a memory that the Dead introduced "Dark Star" to New York on Saturday night, with Weir dedicating the song to jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery, who had died earlier that day (June 15). It is outside of the scope of this blog to discuss Wes Montgomery's greatness as an electric guitar player, but there would be no Bob Weir without him, and it is appropriate that the only known "dedication" of the Dead's signature song was to such a great musician on the night of his death.

Appendix: The Seventh Sons
The Seventh Sons were a Greenwich Village based band featuring guitarist Buzzy Linhart. Linhart was well-regarded by other musicians, and released a few little known albums, but I don't know what the Seventh Sons sounded like. I believe that the Friday early show usually featured an "audition" band, generally a local group, who did not perform the other shows. I think the Seventh Sons are only known to have played due to the widespread story of Rod Stewart's American debut, and I doubt their name appeared on the marquee.

7 comments:

It's worth quoting the witnesses - First, Kenny Schachat on the 6/14 early show: "I was at this show in the 4th row. Also, there was only one set at that Fillmore East early show. The Dead were the second of three bands on the bill. Headlining was the newly formed Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart on vocals on their first U.S. tour. They were great, too! I think the first group was Buzzy Linhart's band. I'm quite certain that Morning Dew was the first song or at least very early in the set, that the Cryptical > Other one > Cryptical > Caboose came after and was the bulk of the set, followed by one or two at the end. I'm less certain, but I believe they played Good Morning Little Schoolgirl. I'm certain that they did not play Lovelight. I'm pretty sure that they also did not play Saint Stephen... I'm certain that they did not play Dark Star on that night." Kenny also remembers that Jerry was playing the circa '56 black Gibson Les Paul Custom for this show.

(Note that at the time, St Stephen would be unheard on record for the entire next year, I believe. The Other One>Caboose being the bulk of the set is very likely, since that was a standard setpiece in '68. And since Stephen & Lovelight appear in the second set, it makes sense that they weren't in the first set. Also, it would be pretty funny for the Dead to open with Morning Dew, if the Jeff Beck Group had just played it!)

He goes on with a more vague memory of the 6/15 early show: "I attended both the 6/14/68 and 6/15/68 early shows at the Fillmore East. I was a little late for the 6/15/68 early show (I think we missed one or two songs). My memories of that show are less clear but I don't think they played Dark Star during that set either. I suppose it's possible that they played it at the very beginning of the set, before we arrived but I rather doubt it and I doubt it even more that they would have played the full Dark Star - Saint Stephen - Eleven that as an opener."

(Note: Indeed it's doubtful, as the Dark Star>St Stephen>Eleven medley had not been put together yet - that would happen sometime in July/August, but all our early Stephens clearly don't go into the Eleven. It's quite possible, though, that Dark Star could have been the opener - at that time it would only have been 10-15 minutes long, at most.)

And the mysterious Wes Montgomery quote: "The first time we heard Dark Star was at the Fillmore East in the late 60's. It was the whole set. Before they started, Bobby (or somebody) said, 'Wes Montgomery died last night. This is for him.'" This is interesting for a couple reasons, if true - one, that the Dead would make an announcement of it on the same evening (since he died on 6/15) - and also the statement that Dark Star was the "whole set". Given the experimentation evident on 6/14, this is possible - but given that Dark Star rarely made it even to the 15-minute mark in 1968, it's unlikely.

I wonder how familiar people in the audience would have been with Dark Star - it had been released as a single in April '68, which apparently flopped, and presumably didn't get much airplay in NY? On the other hand, many of the people there would (obviously) have been Dead fans already, who could have heard the single. At any rate, by June '68 the live versions were a lot more expansive than the single had been.

It's also worth mentioning that one of the undated 1968 "mystery reels" may come from another of these June Fillmore East shows. Since a half-hour sbd reel of the 6/14 late show surfaced, it's possible other stray reels might have survived as well.

The shows were not inudstry oriented. The band came to play and they did just that. The tape fragments from Friday night were recorded on a shitty cassette by myself and a friend. The first set is somewhat intact. The second, however, began with a little ditty called Dark Star. They played D.S. for perhaps ten minutes--sang the first verse--but the audience didn't seem to "get it." So, they suddenly played real quietly and came to an all-but stop for about a minute to shut the crowd up (oddly this worked) and then let rip the feedback you here. The crowd suddenly "got it" (maybe the acid kicked in) and it was off to the races. The Star was taped at the end of a cassette side. We flipped it during the silence. Some years later, this night was placed on a reel to reel and the cassettes put away. Apparanty the reel is now awol, but the first set and the bulk of the second set made it through the years.

The Saturday show was actually better--they were warmed up, settled in, and had a more aware audience. They played TOO and D.S. that night. We did not tape it as dealing with a cassette diminished our enjoyment of the show and the sound quality didn't seem worth it.

Hey ghostofpig, I know that the archival/collecting community would love to preserve those tapes using the best technology currently available. If that's a possibility, please post a way to get in touch (or I will!) ... thanks for your memories!

Hey, JGMF - Ghostofpig was a little errant in his writing! I asked if he was still hanging onto the tapes - the reply: "I wish I were. I thought for sure that it was posted on the archive, but I could be wrong. The first show featured a TOO suite followed, I believe by GMLSchoolgirl. It has been a long time since I heard the original tapes. Thirty years, perhaps."

He made it more clear in a previous post that his tapes are long gone: "What happened with the first set, I have no idea. I used to have a copy, which I wore out over time. These were recorded onto a very small reel to reel with a single mic sticking out of an old army medical kit. My friend transferred it to a standard reel to reel the next day for preservation. I've been out of touch with him for a good thirty years!"

And so a Dead show disappears.... This must have been the fate of many early audience tapes, when isolated tapers weren't in touch with other traders to make copies for, and might not have wanted to spread their lousy-sounding tapes anyway! It begs the question though (if his story's correct), why the second show got into circulation and the first didn't. I don't think fuzzy 40-year-old memories will help there!

Great writing. Thanks for blogging about my favorite concert venue when I was in high school And my favorite Fillmore East concert.I was there for the Friday early show. The Jeff Beck Group were so utterly amazing that they got a standing ovation. That was the first time I had ever seen a FE crowd just spontaneously get to their feet like that, in the three months that I'd been going.I don't recall Rod Stewart hiding out, but he would direct the spotlight guy to "Go over there," indicating toward Beck. Then he'd say, "come over here," kinda making it part of the song lyric almost.I shot a roll of Tri-X that night, developed it and made a few 8x10 prints the next morning. I put them in an envelope and headed over to the Gorham Hotel near Carnegie Hall, where most British bands stayed at the time. I listened to some girls in the lobby bragging, and found out what floor the Jeff Beck Group were on. Then I went up and listened at each door til I heard some music playing.Rod answered the door when I knocked...

They were standing and cheering for a new British pop group last night at the Fillmore East. The American debut of the Jeff Beck Group promises much heated enthusiasm for the quartet in its six-week American tour.Mr. Beck is a young Londoner who distinguished himself for a year and a half as the lead guitarist of the Yardbirds. He was seen, if not really heard, in a sequence of the film "Blow-Up" and has generally earned a reputation as a highly polished and adroit blues guitarist. He and his band deal in the blues mainly, but with an urgency and sweep that is quite hard to resist.The group's principal format is the interaction of Mr. Beck's wild and visionary guitar against the hoarse and insistent shouting of Rod Stewart, with gutsy backing on drums and bass.Their dialogues were lean and laconic, the verbal Ping-Pong of a musical Pinter play.The climaxes were primal, bringing the "big beat" of the English rock school forward.But there were whimsy and invention and modernist games thrown in, in "Beck's Boogie" and variations on "Bolero." All told, an auspicious beginning for an exciting group.The British group upstaged, for one listener, at least, the featured performers, the Grateful Dead of San Francisco. This two-drummer sextet was settling into its elaborate and discursive arrangements in a musically psychedelic vein when the deadline came. The band sounded more cohesive and disciplined than past outings here and was warmly received.A rather aimless performance by a trio called The Seventh Sons opened the evening wanly. Perhaps it was an off-night for the group or perhaps they were totally overwhelmed by the rest of the bill.

(A New Musical Express article from 6/29/68 also reported, "The greatest thing happened in New York last Friday. On his first performance in this country, Jeff Beck became a star. Even in his Yardbird heyday, when Jeff toured America with a few hits under his belt, he didn't get the standing ovation he and his present group received in the MIDDLE of their performance at the Fillmore East!")